Leasing policy threat to boatyards

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A battle royale is erupting on Sydney Harbour between the NSW
Boat Owners Association and the NSW Maritime Authority over
proposed changes to marina leases that could see many shut
down.

The Carr Government has recently released a Draft Commercial
Lease Policy covering the leasehold of marinas, which range
from the popular d'Albora marina, owned by the listed Macquarie
Leisure Trust, the Cruising Yacht Club at Rushcutter's Bay and the
myriad of privately leased marinas dotted around the harbour.

Excluding clubs, there are 37 boatyards and marinas on Sydney
Harbour, of which 20 are held under freehold ownership and the
remainder leasehold.

The proposed new rules mean a lot if you have a marina because
at the end of your lease you don't have any tenure and the lease is
put out for competitive tender.

That means the cost of upkeep of the marinas, being fuel pumps,
foods outlets, tackle hire, will not be compensated as goodwill
when the lease is up.

Also, long-term leaseholders will not have any first right to
renegotiate when the lease is at an end.

Investors and long-term tenants of marinas say this idea is
particularly bad if the marina and land is all leasehold.

In a joint statement issued during the week, the NSW Boat Owners
Association president, Michael Chapman, and Boating Industry
Association general manager, Roy Privett, said the draft commercial
lease policy, now out for public review, was totally against
commercial interests and would cut public facilities on the harbour
in half.

Mr Chapman, who is a maritime lawyer and former head of the
Waterways Authority, said that, if implemented, the laws would
cover not just the big boats of Frank Lowy and Bob Ell and where
they moored, but the boating battlers, the owners of the
100,000-plus weekend tinnies that dot the harbour.

"We are extremely dismayed at the proposed policy and the lack
of foresight and lack of economic and social study to identify the
economic and social outcomes of the policies," Mr Chapman told the
Herald.

"Whether commercial marina operators own or lease their land,
all areas below mean high water mark are leased. Until now,
whenever a lease for this area ended, the first option was given to
the previous leaseholder," he said.

"This makes sense as boatyard and marina operators usually go to
considerable expense to construct jetties, slipways, boatsheds and
other improvements below the mean high water mark.

"Under the proposed policy, the lease will be put out to market
at lease end without even paying the outgoing tenant for their
facilities or business goodwill."

Mr Chapman said this meant marina operators would no longer have
any commercial incentive to improve their facilities.